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Melissa Aviles-Ramos, who will take over in January as the next chancellor of New York City’s public school system, is a longtime New York educator who oversaw the schools’ response to the arrival of tens of thousands of migrant children.
Her swift appointment on Wednesday to lead the nation’s largest school district came less than 24 hours after David C. Banks abruptly announced his resignation. He said he would step down in the middle of the academic year as Mayor Eric Adams’s administration reels from at least four separate federal corruption inquiries.
Mr. Banks’s successor is best known in New York’s education world for overseeing the city’s efforts to enroll and educate the more than 40,000 migrant children who have arrived in the last two years — areas of persistent criticism for the administration.
A native New Yorker, Ms. Aviles-Ramos, 42, has a deep knowledge of the city’s intricate educational bureaucracy, often a significant obstacle for outsiders. She rose through the ranks of the school system, serving as an English teacher, high school principal and superintendent in the Bronx — experiences that could benefit her as she enters the chancellorship.
At an introductory news conference on Wednesday, Ms. Aviles-Ramos projected a calm confidence.
“I am here to tell you that my charge is to make sure we carry through on all of the bright starts and bold futures,” she said, “all of the pathways that we’re building for our children, all of the bridges that we need to build between communities and families, because this is all in service of our children.”
It was not yet clear on Wednesday which issues Ms. Aviles-Ramos would prioritize in the role, though she is expected to preserve Mr. Banks’s reading overhaul, his biggest initiative. Current and former Education Department employees said she might lead the system as a technocrat with administrative talent, rather than as a visionary who ushers in sweeping change.
Here is what to know about Ms. Aviles-Ramos.
She is a close ally of the former chancellor.
At the news conference on Wednesday, Ms. Aviles-Ramos expressed appreciation to the outgoing chancellor for his mentorship. She served as his chief of staff between January 2023 and February 2024 before leaving to take a job as vice president at a for-profit college in the Bronx.
Less than 24 weeks later, Ms. Aviles-Ramos was back at the Education Department headquarters in Lower Manhattan, this time as a top deputy. Upon her return, Mr. Banks praised her “ability to build bridges between schools and communities.”
In recent weeks, she had turned to running interference for Mr. Banks, helping to answer press requests amid the onslaught of attention that stemmed from an F.B.I. raid on his home that was part of a bribery investigation involving his brothers and fiancée.
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She was educated in New York.
After getting her start at Catholic school in the Bronx, Ms. Aviles-Ramos went on to earn an English degree at the nearby Fordham University. She later received a master’s degree in English at The City College of New York and an educational certificate from the College of Saint Rose in Albany, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Ms. Aviles-Ramos joined the New York City school system in 2007 as a public school English teacher, rising through the ranks to become a principal and a superintendent before eventually joining the chancellor’s office in 2022.
She was in charge of integrating migrant students.
Ms. Aviles-Ramos often served as the public face of the system’s response to its new migrant students, fielding questions about enrollment, shelter and transportation issues at City Council hearings and the mayor’s press briefings.
The school system — like the city at large — has strained to respond to the arrival of the new students.
It has struggled to find enough Spanish-speaking educators and mental health counselors, and many teachers have complained about receiving too little guidance and direction from the Education Department on how to help migrant students in their classrooms.
Schools might look for Ms. Aviles-Ramos to create a more robust plan to help the nearly 150,000 public school students who are learning English for the first time.
She is the highest ranking Latina official in the Department of Education.
When she became a deputy chancellor in July, Ms. Aviles-Ramos also became the highest-ranking Latina and Spanish-speaking official in the Department of Education.
She opened her remarks on Wednesday by thanking the Latino community, in Spanish, for their support.
“When you say things in Spanish they sound so much better,” she said.
In recent years, the Hispanic student population in the city’s public schools has grown significantly. Last week, during his “State of Our Schools” address, Mr. Banks announced that 42 percent of public school students in the city identified as Hispanic, a number he described as “a shock to a lot of people” that underscored the need to better address those students’ needs and interests in the curriculum.
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